Communicating spending cuts: lessons for Australian university leaders

In 2011 and 2012, two Australian university vice chancellors flagged spending cuts at their institutions to overcome financial problems. In both cases, union and staff opposition led to public protests, intense media scrutiny, delays and retreats. This article compares the two cases to see what lessons may be drawn for university leaders faced with the complex, difficult and risky task of introducing spending cuts, a likely feature of Australian university management in the next few years. How can they do this in ways that cause minimal damage to programmes; are acceptable to those affected; and avoid undue damage to staff morale, student interests or institutional reputation?     

Haute finance in the not-so-quiet revolution: colonialisme Anglo-Saxonne and the bombing of la Bourse de Montréal

ABSTRACT

This paper examines a situation in which finance is perceived as imperialist – as immanent to, and serving the interests of, a single ‘culture’ in the colloquial sense. The analysis centres on the long-forgotten 1969 bombing of the trading floor of la Bourse de Montréal (the Montréal Stock Exchange), a moment in an intense phase of the Québécois movement for independence from Canada. Because of the way in which the bombers framed the attack, and its political-economic and discursive contexts, the bombing presents an opportunity to think about key features of the relation between finance and cultural domination or imperialism. These features relate to finance’s specific articulation to the future, uncertainty, and, in the words of the séparatistes of the time, cultural ‘destiny’. The paper has three parts. The first describes the bombing of la Bourse and the public, media, and state responses, linking it to Québécois cultural-political geographies at several scales. Part two places the bombing in the longer-run cultural-politicization of finance in the francophone independence movement, to outline a specifically Québecois critique of finance capital. The third part considers finance’s perceived and real connection to, and thus capacity to shape or constrain, the cultural-political construction of collective possibility.     

Cascadia rising: soccer,region, and identity

In this article we examine the relationship between soccer culture and the vernacular region of Cascadia. Specifically, we consider how supporters of the Portland Timbers, Seattle Sounders and Vancouver Whitecaps mobilize the bioregional narrative of Cascadia. This Cascadian narrative helps to solidify supporter culture and identity by fostering a connection between supporters and place. As a result, soccer has also become one conduit through which ideas about Cascadia are constructed, experienced and communicated. In this way, ideas about Cascadia help to construct regional and local soccer cultures in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver and in turn, those soccer cultures help to construct and promote Cascadia. We examine three aspects of this situation: the formation of the Cascadia Football Federation, the Cascadia Cup Controversy and the use of Cascadian iconography by supporters of the aforementioned clubs.     

Children with Specific Speech and Language Difficulties—the teachers' perspective

Children with specific speech and language difficulties are frequently placed in mainstream classrooms with varying degrees of support. Yet little attention has been paid to class teachers' views about the children's problems and educational needs. This paper reports the findings of a two-stage project in two local education authorities investigating the characteristics and needs of children with specific speech and language difficulties (SSLD). Teachers, educational psychologists, and speech and language therapists in two local education authorities identified 133 eight year-old children who experienced primary difficulties with speech and language. Fifty-nine children and a subsample of 10 children of the same age who attended specialist regional schools participated in further investigations. Each of the children was assessed using a battery of instruments covering language, basic attainments and self- esteem. In addition, their teachers completed behaviour rating scales and an individual interview. The teachers comprised those working in specialist provisions, but also those in mainstream schools. In this paper data derived from the interviews with the teachers, supplemented by information from the assessments of the children's skills, will be reported. The teachers faced three challenges: the additional difficulties experienced by the children, their own knowledge gaps, and the barriers to meeting the children's needs. The implications of the results for inclusive education are addressed.     

Is job sharing worthwhile? A cost-benefit analysis in UK universities

Around 60 per cent of UK universities practice job sharing. This article is based on a survey of Personnel Directors in UK universities concerning their perceptions of job sharing. These responses were then used to carry out a cost benefit evaluation of job sharing from the universities' perspective. If productivity of workers in the shared job rose by as little as 0.35 per cent – one third of one per cent – the estimated increase in Personnel Section costs would be covered. If there was a 5 per cent increase in productivity, the ratio of benefits to costs would be 14.3 to 1. Universities also save as a result of greater retention of staff, and there are also important benefits to society, particularly less overall stress and reduced unemployment levels.     

Intelligent educational systems: identifying and decoupling the conversational levels

Intelligent educational systems (IESs) have traditionally been thought of in terms of their functional subsystems. The three obligatory subsystems are those containing domain knowledge, a model of the learner's current state, and teaching knowledge. We argue that it is useful to reconceptualise IESs: we should think of them from the point of view of the multiple levels of conversational interaction that they support with a learner. We suggest that in many cases it is useful to identify a task level at which the learner is working, and a higher discussion level at which the learner and system converse about, and reflect on the primary task. If the two levels can be to some extent decoupled, meaning that each level has less than complete knowledge of the other level, IES development might be simplified. In some cases an IES might be built by the addition of a discussion level component to an existing computer tool, simulation, game or microworld. A critical requirement for a decoupled IES is a representation for communication between levels; study of human tutoring is needed to guide identification of suitable representations.     

Modelling success networks to improve the quality of undergraduate education

Discussions of support and intervention in undergraduate university education are dominated by discussion of attrition. This study quests more broadly in arguing that support and intervention for undergraduate students may also benefit from models of engagement and success as well as conventional risk and failure. Supporting this proposition is a study that involved multifactorial approaches based in a combination of aspects of social network theory and social ecology theory. Analysis was enacted through social network analysis of archival data sets derived from a single cohort of 4065 undergraduate students at a regional Australian university. The findings suggest that models of academic success are suited to examination of the broader issues of student agency and undergraduate university education. The success networks developed are uniquely student-centred and place-based and may serve as more nuanced models for university intervention and support structures and mechanisms.     

The professional voice: Comparing questionnaire and telephone methods in a national survey of teachers' perceptions

This article compares the results obtained from using two different methodological approaches to elicit teachers' views on their professional role, the key challenges and their aspirations for the future. One approach used a postal/online questionnaire, while the other used telephone interviews, posing a selection of the same questions. The research was carried out on two statistically comparable samples of teachers in England in spring 2004. Significant differences in responses were observed which seem to be attributable to the methods employed. In particular, more ‘definite’ responses were obtained in the interviews than in response to the questionnaire. This article reviews the comparative outcomes in the context of existing research and explores why the separate methods may have produced significantly different responses to the same questions.